The $850 Sandwich

Growing up, my brother and I endlessly heard this line from one or other of the Parent Units if we failed to clean our plates: "There are people starving in India."

We were fairly young, firmly planted on the East Coast and not too geographically inclined otherwise, so I’m not sure it even registered what or where this India business was about.

If they’d said, "There are people starving in Flatbush," maybe we would have had a clue.

Then one year the family got a Siberian Husky dog. Once he became part of our household, the India line was retired, because he cleaned everybody’s plate. Like a mobster, he even demanded shakedowns, placing his chin on your thigh as he sat his 120-pound self under the table, growling sotto voce until someone produced a handout.

No kitchen pail was invented that could seal that Husky from the garbage. He saved me and my brother from many an experimental meal, i.e., Mom gets obsessed suddenly with meat loaf, an item she’d never prepared before, and needs guinea pigs to taste-test.

Hidden beneath the folds of the tablecloth was the Canine Insinkerator, He-Who-Consumed-All. While my brother ran interference with some ruse or other to distract She-Who-Fed-Us-Wretched-Meat-Loaf, I’d shovel a plateful of her concoction to the dog. When he was 9, he developed diverticulosis, but I’m not sure this had anything to do with his culinary misadventures in our kitchen.

Fast forward to the present and that four-legged hound dog pal o’mine, who has the same genes as the voracious Husky.

There is nothing that’s non-consumable to her. Out on trails she will zero in on horse pucky and unburied human waste and a deer leg some coyote or mountain lion thoughtfully dropped off within her hailing distance. A burrito wrapper on a sidewalk is manna from heaven to her.

Of course, the dog doesn’t have to look far for a role model.

As a fast food junkie who gobbles in the car as I drive around, I’m a soft touch when my drooling seatmate ogles me for a handout. So little did I think sharing a roast beef sandwich with mayo on a sesame seed bun would deter her, She-Who-Eats-Unidentifiable-Disgusting-Things-Found-on-the-Filthy-Ground.

WRONG!

This is a cautionary tale, folks. A dog is not a garbage pail, no matter how much she acts like one. I met a lady who told me she made cheese quesadillas as a treat for her pooches and shared pizzas—but held the bell peppers. It made me queasy just to hear of it, and I’d thought I was the top sinner when it came to dog-feeding miscues.

So I bought this innocent looking $5 roast beef sandwich at a local fast food restaurant.

We had just come down from a good hike in the mountains, with lots of running around justifying a "jumbo-sized" sandwich we outdoorsy girls might share to satiate our appetites. Only problem is, one of us girls is a dog. Well, that was one problem. The other problem was, I actually thought twice about giving her half, but in the microsecond of doubt I had, she had inhaled her portion faster than a speeding bullet.

There wasn’t a crumb left behind, not a trace to indicate an item of food had once been inside the foil wrapper. She even managed to smooth out the creases in the foil with her snout, anxiously looking for something she might possibly have missed.

A half hour or so after our repast, my tummy had repercussions I blamed on the sandwich.

I thought nothing of its effect on the dog until the following morning when all hell broke loose. Suffice to say that Miss Garbage Breath had finally met her junk food nemesis. Although she never lost her perkiness, she lost a lot elsewise. The kids in the neighborhood, as most kids anywhere, think subjects like this are a riot and have many names for it. Lost her lunch. Tossed her cookies. Barf, upchuck, heave, hurl, hawk. Call it what you will, it was ghastly fall out. I could have weathered it had I not noticed copious amounts of blood being spewed "from both working ends."

But the true crisis was signaled when this dog—to the manor born, i.e., will not sit or sleep on anything that has not come from a fine furniture outlet—crawled off the sofa to sprawl in an exhausted heap on the floor. I flicked on the light. My living room carpet resembled a grisly murder scene. The CSI guys would’ve been surprised to learn the culprit was a $5 sandwich.

So off we went, I in a frightful panic by then, to the Pet Emergency Clinic [open 24/7 at 2967 N. Moorpark Road, Thousand Oaks; (805) 492-2436] to receive a scary diagnosis of severe pancreatitis likely triggered by—you betcha, that sandwich.

"Dogs really can’t handle that kind of fatty greasy food," the emergency vet said sympathetically—I’m sure she wanted to append you moron to the end of her sentence.

Later our regular vet would tell me how lucky I was that the dog bounced back so fast. A gentleman, he refrained from appending you big numbskull to his comment.

And $850 and a night of IV fluids, three different kinds of medication and a pricey new specialized dog food later, one of us has learned her lesson.

With thanks to Lori O’Neil, DVM and Stephen Watase, DVM, for helping the writer’s dog, Gem.

Columns RSS feed